Aussie Rules and Reconciliation
Tuesday 16 September 2008
Growing up in country Victoria, Barry Judd’s earliest passions were reading – and Australian Rules Football. But having both Indigenous and Anglo-Australian ancestry, his childhood was also dominated by a personal journey to unravel his own cultural and racial identity.
Dr Barry Judd subsequently became Director of the Centre for Indigenous Education at the University of Melbourne, so there could be few, if any, better qualified than he to write about the role of Aussie Rules in defining relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Nor could there be a more appropriate time to launch his book, On the Boundary Line – Colonial Identity in Football, than in September as Melbourne becomes gripped in its annual Grand Final ‘footy-fever’.
By contrast, asking the Warden of Trinity College, Associate Professor Andrew McGowan, to launch the publication may have seemed mildly surprising at first glance. The reasons for this choice, however, quickly became obvious to those attending this evening’s launch function at the College, when Professor McGowan spoke of Trinity’s remarkable commitment to Indigenous education – both paving the way for Indigenous students to access, and succeed in, higher education, and helping Trinity to rethink it’s own identity in light of this engagement.
In particular, he gave an overview of the BA Extended – a new tertiary pathway for Indigenous undergraduates, scheduled for introduction in 2009 and developed in partnership between Trinity College, the Centre for Indigenous Education and the Arts Faculty at the University of Melbourne.
Unfortunately, Barry Judd himself did not always enjoy such a positive education experience. ‘After being humiliated in Grade 1 for suggesting that Australian history went back beyond the arrival of white people, I knew that teachers could not be trusted. So I went about educating myself,’ he said.
In his book, Barry explores the themes of racial and cultural differences between ‘settler’ and ‘native’ as evidenced within the social space of Australian football through in-depth investigations of three Australian footballers – Tom Wills, Joe Johnson and Syd Jackson – whose lives were characterised by cultural exchange and entanglement across the frontiers dividing Aboriginal and Anglo-Australia.
Greg de Moore, author of Tom Wills: his spectacular rise and tragic fall, was among those who participated in the post-launch discussion, while Jeff Richardson from ABC Radio’s ‘Coodabeen Champions’ was MC for the evening.
‘Although football has achieved great things in allowing Indigenous people to participate in a positive way, there are still great hurdles to overcome,’ Barry noted. ‘For example, there is only one Indigenous person I can think of in the whole of the off-field AFL scene, including coaches, administrators and commentators.’
Barry hopes that AFL football will achieve reconciliation, but suggested, ‘The heavy work needs to be done at the political level, and by education institutions such as this. It's about educating non-Indigenous people to know who they are.’
(And yes, Barry Judd is a cousin of legendary Carlton footballer Chris Judd.)
On the Boundary Line – Colonial Identity in Football by Barry Judd (Australian Scholarly PublishingP/L) 978 1 921 509 025 PB RRP $39.95
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